The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, April 19, 2013

by Evelyn GordonThe UN High Commissioner for Refugees is threatening
to end relief operations for Syrian refugees, who currently number 1.3
million and counting, if it doesn’t receive the necessary funds soon.
The agency says it has received only a third of the $1 billion it needs
through June, and only $400 million of the $1.5 billion donors pledged
earlier this year. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned
explicitly that absent more funds, UNHCR will have to stop distributing food to refugees in Lebanon next month. And Jordan, which has the largest population of Syrian refugees, is threatening to close its borders to new entrants unless more aid is forthcoming urgently.

Meanwhile, another UN agency enjoys comfortable funding of about $1
billion a year to help a very different group of refugees–refugees who
generally live in permanent homes rather than flimsy tents in makeshift
camps; who have never faced the trauma of flight and dislocation, having
lived all their lives in the place where they were born; who often have
jobs that provide an income on top of their refugee benefits; and who
enjoy regular access to schooling, healthcare and all the other benefits
of non-refugee life. In short, these “refugees” are infinitely better
off than their Syrian brethren–yet their generous funding continues
undisturbed even as Syrian refugees are facing the imminent loss of such
basics as food and fresh water. I am talking, of course, about UNRWA.

It has long been clear that UNRWA–which
deals solely with Palestinian refugees, while UNHCR bears
responsibility for all other refugees on the planet–is a major obstacle
to Israeli-Palestinian peace. Since, unlike UNHCR, it grants refugee
status to the original refugees’ descendants in perpetuity, the number
of Palestinian refugees has ballooned from under 700,000 in 1949 to
over five million today, even as the world’s non-Palestinian refugee
population has shrunk from over 100 million to under 30 million.
Moreover, while UNHCR’s primary goal is to resettle refugees, UNRWA
hasn’t resettled a single refugee in its history: By its definition,
refugees remain refugees even after acquiring citizenship in another
country. It has thereby perpetuated
and exacerbated the Palestinian refugee problem to the point where it
has become the single greatest obstacle to an Israeli-Palestinian
agreement: Israel cannot absorb five million Palestinian refugees
(though it could easily absorb the fewer than 50,000 original refugees
who still remain alive), yet under UNRWA’s rules, refugee status can’t
be ended except by resettlement in Israel.

But an even more basic reason for abolishing UNRWA is the harm it
does to the world’s most vulnerable people–real refugees like the
Syrians. Were the Palestinians handled by UNHCR like all other refugees
are, UNHCR would have the budgetary flexibility to temporarily divert
aid from the Palestinians, who need it far less, to people who need it
more, like the Syrians today. Instead, it is forced to watch helplessly
as Syrian refugees go roofless and hungry while $1 billion in aid is
squandered on Palestinians with homes, jobs, and all the comforts of
settled life. Thus, anyone who claims to have a shred of genuine humanitarian
concern ought to be agitating for UNRWA’s abolition and the
Palestinians’ transfer to UNHCR’s auspices. Unfortunately for the
Syrians, it seems that many of the world’s self-proclaimed humanitarians
prefer harming Israel to helping those who need it most.Evelyn GordonSource: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/04/18/how-unrwa-steals-money-from-those-who-need-it-most/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

On April 16, Palestinians in Gaza cheered.
They danced in the streets and handed out candy and sweets to motorists
and pedestrians alike. They were not however celebrating the
inauguration of a new school or the completion of a hospital. Instead,
they were celebrating death. On April 16, Palestinians of Gaza
celebrated the Boston marathon atrocity. While our first responders were
picking up severed limbs and tending to the wounded, Palestinians
reveled in Boston’s misery.

The Palestinian reaction to the horrific events in Boston was
unsurprising and was in fact quite predictable. After the 9-11 attacks
that killed 3,000 people, the Palestinian response was quite similar.
Old women were seen shrieking in jubilation while children passed out sweets and men cheered approvingly.

These are Israel’s so-called “peace partners.” These are the people
who are demanding that Israel relinquish all the land liberated during
the Six-Day War of 1967. And these are the people who want to establish a
twenty-third dysfunctional Arab state called “Palestine” alongside
Israel’s most vulnerable and populated areas.

April 17, 2013 marks the seventh anniversary of the Rosh Ha’ir suicide bombing
in Tel-Aviv that claimed the lives of 11 civilians including Florida
resident, 16-year-old Daniel Wultz. Then as now, civilians were targeted
and murdered simply because they believed in freedom. Then as now,
those who prepared the bombs made sure to pack them with an assortment
of shrapnel to inflict maximum bloodletting. And then as now,
Palestinian Arabs cheered as they witnessed mothers looking for their
missing children and men unable to get up off the floor because of
severed limbs. Their perverted culture – a culture that revels in death and destruction – encourages this type of aberrant reaction to the sufferings of others.

The Boston massacre and Rosh Ha’ir Arab homicide attack underscore
the fact that the U.S. and Israel are inexorably bound by shared moral
values and principles and it is precisely these principles – those which
extol freedom and democracy – that infuriate our enemies. The Arab
world, deeply suspicious, distrustful, misogynistic and xenophobic, is
mired in medieval backwardness. Their hatred of the West, judging by
their deviant reaction to the killing of innocents in Boston, New York
and Tel-Aviv, is palpable.

It is time for those in the West who sanctimoniously clamor for the
creation of a Palestinian state, to take a closer look at the people
they are advocating for. People who cheer when civilians are butchered
deserve their own [insane] asylum, not statehood.

According to the indictment,
members of the terror cell planned to carry out a terror attack against
Israeli security personnel at Temple Mount.

Photo credit: Reuters

Indictments were filed on Wednesday against
members of a recently apprehended terror cell, residents of east
Jerusalem, who allegedly conspired to kidnap and murder an Israeli in
order to steal his weapon.

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and the
Jerusalem police arrested the cell in March. According to the Shin Bet,
during one of their outings, three cell members had picked up a Jewish
hitchhiker, but upon learning that he was not carrying a weapon, decided
to let him go. The Shin Bet says that the cell had also planned to
carry out a terrorist attack at Temple Mount, including firing weapons
at Israeli security personnel stationed there.

The indictment, filed with the Jerusalem
District Court, charges the cell members with a host of crimes,
including conspiring to commit a kidnapping, conspiring to commit
murder, conspiring to assist an enemy in wartime, assisting an enemy
during wartime, contact with an enemy agent, carrying illegal weapons,
attempted purchase of illegal weapons, attempted robbery, attempted
murder, illegal military training and obstruction of justice.

According to the Shin Bet, the leader of the
cell, Nur Hamdan, 25, confessed that he had planned to carry out an
attack on Temple Mount "to protect Al-Aqsa mosque." He reportedly said
that he had been inspired by YouTube videos detailing terror attacks in
Jerusalem, especially the 2008 attack at Mercaz Harav yeshiva (in which
eight students were killed).

Hamdan allegedly approached Al-Aqsa Martyrs'
Brigade in Gaza and in Nablus seeking assistance in preparing a shooting
attack against Israeli targets on Temple Mount. He eventually recruited
four friends from east Jerusalem to assist in the attack, the Shin Bet
said.

The members of the cell allegedly trained
several times near Kalandiya in northern Jerusalem, and even planned to
travel to Nablus to meet with a Tanzim activist and ask him for weapons
and money. In addition, the cell had allegedly planned to steal weapons
from Israeli police officers, and had even built several makeshift pipe
bombs for that end.

The weapons already in the cell's possession
were discovered at the east Jerusalem home of additional suspect Firas
Djani. The police discovered two handguns, ammunition and a pipe bomb.

Lilach Shoval

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=8699Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Tehran moves to speed up nuclear program
despite sanctions, further fueling Western concerns over its nuclear
advances • "A decade of diplomatic efforts has failed," Western diplomat
says.

Iranian news reports the
country's nuclear progress.

|

Photo credit: Press TV screen grab

Iran is increasing the number of advanced
uranium enrichment centrifuges installed at its Natanz underground
plant, despite tightening international sanctions aimed at stopping
Tehran's nuclear progress, Western diplomats said on Wednesday.

For years, Iran has been trying to develop
centrifuges that are more efficient than the erratic 1970s era IR-1
machines it now uses, but efforts to introduce new models have been
dogged by technical hurdles and difficulty in obtaining key parts
abroad.

If launched and operated successfully, the new
centrifuges would enable the Islamic Republic to sharply speed up
sensitive atomic activity, which it says is for peaceful energy purposes
but which the West fears may be aimed at building nuclear bombs.

"It is clear Iran can build them. The question
is how many and how good they are," one Western envoy said. Another
envoy commented: "A decade of diplomatic efforts has failed."

The planned deployment of next-generation
centrifuges underlines Iran's refusal to bow to pressure to curb its
nuclear program, and may further complicate efforts to resolve the
dispute diplomatically and avoid a spiral into war.

In early March, Iran announced that it would
build about 3,000 advanced centrifuges. But experts and diplomats said
it was unclear whether it had the capability and materials needed to
make so many, and also to run them smoothly.

Although still far from the target number, one
diplomatic source estimated that roughly 500 to 600 so-called IR-2m
centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had now been put in place at
the Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran. According to a report
issued in February by the U.N. nuclear watchdog two months ago there
were only 180. At the same time, Iran had more than 12,000
old-generation centrifuges installed at Natanz, but not all were
enriching.

Two other envoys in Vienna, where the U.N.'s
International Atomic Energy Agency is based, also said the number of
installed IR-2m machines was growing but they did not have details. The
next IAEA report on Iran is expected in late May.

The diplomats said the new centrifuges were
not yet operational, but the increase in installation was still likely
to add to Western alarm over Iran's nuclear advances.

The most recent round of nuclear negotiations
held between Iran and world powers in Kazakhstan in early April failed
to yield a diplomatic breakthrough, and the United States and Israel
have not ruled out military action to prevent Tehran from obtaining
nuclear weapons.

If hundreds of new centrifuges have indeed
been installed, "it indicates that Iran has made a significant
breakthrough both in mastering the technology and in acquiring the raw
materials," said nuclear expert Mark Fitzpatrick of the International
Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

"This development will be of major concern to
countries that are worried about Iran's growing ability to quickly
produce nuclear weapons."

Iran had previously been believed to face a
shortage of the high strength metals necessary to produce the new
centrifuges in large numbers, but the installations suggest that Iran
possesses both the technology and the raw materials to mass-produce
centrifuges that can enrich uranium much faster than the more than
12,000 inefficient machines now making up the backbone of its enrichment
program.

The United States, Israel, and their allies
say Tehran's nuclear secrecy and suspicions they shared with the IAEA
that Iran may have worked secretly on nuclear arms makes them fear Iran
may use the technology to create weapons-level uranium that can be used
in an atomic bomb.

Former IAEA Deputy Director-General Olli Heinonen
recently said that Tehran could install 3,000 advanced centrifuges at
Natanz within nine months from the startup date.

The
day before the Marathon Massacre, the New York Times had scored
plaudits for running an op-ed by one of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards
complaining about his hard life in Guantanamo Bay.

On April 14th, the paper of broken record paid 150 dollars to an Al
Qaeda member for the opportunity to complain about being force fed
during his hunger strike. On April 15th the bombs went off.

The attacks of September 11 introduced a dividing line. There was the
world of September 10 and the world of September 11. There was no such
clear dividing line when September 11 faded from memory and we returned
to a September 10 world. Nor is there an exact date for when we will
return to an April 14 world in which it is okay to pay a terrorist in
exchange for his propaganda. But if the media has its way, that day
can’t come soon enough.

A day after the bombings, media outlets wrote that a decade without
terror had come to an end. But the terror had never stopped or paused.
The FBI and local law enforcement had gone on breaking up terror plots
to the skepticism and ridicule of the media which accused them of
violating Muslim civil rights and manufacturing threats.

Some of those plots seemed laughable. A man setting up a car bomb
near a Broadway theater where crowds waiting to see The Lion King
musical, kids in tow, were lining up. Underwear bombers. Shoe bombers.
It became fashionable to laugh at the silly crazies trying to kill
people in ridiculous ways. Almost as silly as trying to hijack planes
while armed only with box cutters and then ramming those planes into
buildings.

Liberal urbanites stopped breathing sighs of relief every time a
terror plot was broken up and turned on law enforcement. They were
suspicions that these were just setups. Representatives of Muslim groups
complained that law enforcement was taking confused kids and tricking
them into terrorist plots that they never could have carried out on
their own.

But there was only one way to find out.

Last year the Associated Press won a Pulitzer for its attack on the
NYPD’s mosque surveillance program. But that was the April 14 mindset.
Now after April 15, the police are once again heroes and any editorials
from imprisoned terrorists complaining about the lack of new Harry
Potter novels at Gitmo have temporarily been placed on hold. But the
police know better than anyone that it will not take very long for them
to go from the heroes to the villains.

The long spring in which Americans didn’t have to turn on the news
and see bloody body parts everywhere was made possible by the dedicated
work of the very people the media spent a decade undermining. The media
was undermining them on April 14, but two days later it was
acknowledging that the temporary peace brought about by the work of the
very people they despised had made their temporary ignorance of terror
possible.

We don’t know who perpetrated the Marathon Massacre, but many of the
Muslim terrorist plots broken up by the authorities would have been as
deadly. And there will be others like them in the future.

While law enforcement pores over the wreckage, the media is waiting
for the time when it will once again be safe to pay terrorists for their
propaganda. If the bomber turns out to be anything other than a Muslim
terrorist, then they can turn the calendar back to April 14 when it was
safe to support terrorists. If he turns out to be in any way associated
with the right, then they can celebrate hitting propaganda pay dirt. But
even if he’s only another Unabomber or another Bill Ayers, the false
spring of April 14 will still beckon.

Three days later in the New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman
used Israel as an inspirational example of getting back to business as
usual while leaving no reminders that an act of terror took place.
Friedman wasn’t the only one to use Israel as an example, but it’s a
very bad example. Israel’s peace process locked it into a cycle of
terrorism. The threat of violence is constant and no one dwells on it.

A decade after the Hamas bombing that Friedman mentioned, Obama was
able to pressure Israel into cutting a deal with Turkey that will help
Hamas. That is the sort of terrible mistake that gets made when you
don’t dwell on terror, but pick up the pieces and move on as quickly as
you can.

Refusing to dwell on terror doesn’t defeat the terrorists. It locks
you into an April 14 mentality where you strive to put April 15 out of
your mind as fast as possible. To move past September 11 and all the
other dates like it, you must learn how to stop them from happening
again; rather than forgetting that they ever happened.

What Friedman really wants is to return to April 14 as soon as
possible. And he’s not alone. Few people really want to live with
terror. Even the liberal desire for a more conventional “white dude”
bomber is perfectly understandable because that bomber, even if he is
another Bill Ayers, is part of a more conventional and controllable
world.

A homegrown monster, an Eric Rudolph, Bill Ayers, Timothy McVeigh or
Ted Kaczynski, would be understandable. Even Charles Manson makes more
sense to liberals than Mohammed Atta, Nidal Hasan, Najibullah Zazi,
Faisal Shahzad or the legion of less familiar names who plotted to carry
out their own terrorist atrocities.

They cannot be talked about in terms of class, race, gender or any of
the other familiar lenses that the optometrists of the left put in the
glasses with which they insist we see the world. They are at war with
us.

And war changes everything. War ushers in a September 11 world. An April 15 world.April 14 is a world where terrorism really isn’t that serious, but a
terrorist hunger strike is. It’s a world where terrorists are goofy men
with bombs in their underwear or their shoes, where global warming is
the biggest threat to the human race and we all need to think more about
our white privilege.

It’s the world that the New York Times understands.

The media narrative is built on preserving that world. September 11
dealt a blow to that world, but the wound has scabbed over and the old
comfortable liberal verities have come back. Now the media has its
fingers crossed hoping that another “white dude” will be led out and
that he will have a motive dealing with abortion or race that fits
comfortably into their worldview of good lefties and evil righties. What
they fear is another Islamic terrorist, another promising
twenty-something from Pakistan or the Middle East, with a middle class
background and a graduate degree, reciting Koranic verses.

They don’t understand him, but they fear him. Not for his ability to
kill them, but for his ability to destroy the world that they have built
up. A world where left is right and right is wrong and diversity solves
everything and the only thing we have to fear is being frightened of
people who are different than us.

They fear that the long utopian dream that they fell into after the
memories of September 11 faded has come to an end with another blast and
another shout of Allah Akbar.

Baghdad, Asharq Al-Awsat—Osama
Al-Nujaifi, the speaker of the Iraqi Council of Representatives and a
leading figure in Al-Iraqiya coalition led by Iyad Allawi, was once
among the most optimistic of Iraqi leaders and officials about the
direction of the country’s politics.

Asharq Al-Awsat found him to be more pessimistic in its
recent interview with him in his Baghdad office. In a wide-ranging
interview, he admitted that he feared the return to widespread violence,
but struck a defiant tone on his endorsement of the demands of the
protesters that have filled the squares of Sunni towns and cities in
Iraq, insisting that they were merely attempting to uphold their
constitutional rights, and that he has a duty to help them.

The following interview has been edited for length:

Asharq Al-Awsat: It was said that you sided with
your list, Al-Iraqiya and with a certain group, namely the Sunni Arabs,
when you addressed the demonstrators in Mosul and adopted their demands.
What is your comment?

Osama Al-Nujaifi : I believe in national unity and in defending the
oppressed whoever they are. I did not side with anyone but I now see
that the injustice has centered on certain governorates and a certain
group, the Sunni Arabs, as a result of policies, convictions, and
actions—and not just words—by government and political parties.

Because of all this, I had to intervene and defend these people. If
any injustice befalls anyone in Iraq, whether they are Shi’ites, Sunnis,
Kurds, or Turkoman, I will defend them from the premise that I am first
an Iraqi and that as the speaker of the Council of Representatives, I
should speak on behalf of the Iraqi people, and am responsible for the
application of the constitution. I have taken up the banner of defending
Iraqis. The injustice centered on the western and northern governorates
and I saw it as my duty to stand with the Iraqis there, work to restore
their rights in full, restore the balance to the country, and have a
single benchmark for dealing with Iraqis on the basis of citizenship.

If some parties want to discriminate between Iraqis and deal with
them on the basis of their religion, doctrine or nationality, then they
are wrong. We must respond to this injustice and reckless behavior and
take a personal stand on behalf of those I represent, with those people
who are victims of injustice.

Q: Do you believe that Sunni Arabs are marginalized or oppressed at present?

I said this more than two years ago, and the fact is that this is not
just my conviction as a politician who knows this issue inside and out
but also that of the man in the street. This marginalization, injustice,
and targeting of the Sunni Arabs have become a phenomenon. Even Muqtada
Al-Sadr, one of the known Shi’ite leaders, mentioned this several
times, as did the Shi’ite religious leadership in Najaf which has raised
this issue and has spoken about it many times.

Even Shi’ite leaders who do not say this publicly say it to us in
secret. They are not happy with what is happening in the country. There
is one reason for this targeting of the Sunni Arabs, and it is the
weakness of the one behind it, who has lost popular support and wants to
incite sectarianism to win the people’s votes and scare them that there
is a threat to the regime, and an attempt to return to the former
regime and things like that.

We are saying that these actions are tantamount to a systematic
policy pursued by some parties in government to humiliate the people and
treat them as inferiors, and have been employed against certain
provinces for a long period of time.

I therefore believe that hiding these facts is not right and a breach
of official responsibility … As I have said, I stood with these people
to defend them against the injustice befalling them and against those
who have oppressed them.

Q: Do you view the demands of the demonstrators in the western and northern governorates as legitimate?

Their demands are clear and do not need explanation. They can be
summed up as achieving justice, creating a balance in the state,
repealing some legislation that has been used badly against their
community, making government more transparent, and reforming the
judiciary. All these are clear and unambiguous matters. They demand the
rights enshrined in the constitution, but which have been upheld in a
selective way. Some laws are all right but are implemented in a
selective way, such as the Accountability and Justice Law that was
applied in some governorates while others were exempted from it. There
are even people in breach of this law who have been given posts and are
today quite prominent, while some parts of the constitution are being
ignored.

Q: But there are some demands in these demonstrations calling
for bringing down the government and repealing the constitution. Do you
consider this legitimate?

Some voices appeared among the demonstrators demanding the repeal of
the constitution and the regime’s downfall. These are totally rejected
by us and the demonstrators. Some slogans that were alien to the spirit
of the demonstrators’ demands were voiced in Al-’Izzah and Al-Karamah
Square in Ramadi, and these were expelled forcibly by the demonstrators
from the square. Muqtada Al-Sadr praised the latter’s actions.

Q: How do you explain the raising of the flag of the former regime by some demonstrators?

That was a misguided action by a very small number of people and
provides justification for some accusations. Raising the flag does not
actually change anything and this represents only the person raising it.
In one demonstration, some raised Al-Qaeda’s flag, and the
demonstrators totally rejected it.

We are saying that there should be compliance with the constitution
and the overwhelming majority of those leading and directing the
demonstrators are demanding their legal constitutional rights. But when
there are half a million demonstrators and then one person raises a flag
here and another one there, then this represents this single person and
not the demonstration or demonstrators [as a whole].

Q: Are you supporting these demonstrations for electoral reasons?

No, never. I have said before, I defend the people’s rights before
and after the elections and have been doing it for a long time. The
demonstrations coincided with the election date and started after the
residence of Dr. Rafie Al-Isawi [a leading Al-Iraqiya member and former
finance minister] was targeted.

The one who planned the persecution of Isawi was the one who ignited
the latent anger at the injustice imposed on the people. These
demonstrations began, spread everywhere in Iraq, and have made the
demonstrators’ demand very clear. There is absolutely no connection with
the elections and no one is electioneering in these demonstrations.
Those stepping up to the platforms are clerics, tribal sheikhs and
nationalist figures and youths, and there is not an elections poster or
slogan on display.

Q: Most of you in the Al-Iraqiya List are Sunni Arab leaders,
but Vice President Tariq Al-Hashemi was sentenced to death on terrorism
charges and is now outside Iraq. Salih Al-Mutlak was marginalized
because of a statement in which he described Prime Minister Maliki as “a
dictator.” Al-Isawi’s residence was raided and he was accused of
protecting terrorism. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s State of Law
Coalition demanded withdrawal of confidence from you as speaker of the
Council of Representatives. All these names are of Sunni Arabs. What
kind of national participation is being talked about?

This is the persecution that we are talking about—the sectarian way
the law is applied and the obvious targeting of the symbols of the Sunni
Arab community. The aim is to break the will of the Sunnis in Iraq. The
one who has followed this road has made a mistake because the
demonstrations are the best evidence that this was a mistake because he
has circumvented the people’s feelings, weakened the country and
government, disrupted the political process, and dealt selectively in a
disrespectful way with ministers and leaders. When [Al-Iraqiya]
ministers did not attend the cabinet meetings, he [Maliki] gave them
compulsory vacations, banned them from entering their ministries, and
withdrew their protection teams.

Q: Does the prime minister believe you pose a danger to him?

The danger comes from the attempt by him [Maliki] to impose a
sectarian system on the country. More dangerous than this is the
imposition of narrow partisan and personal agendas. The majority of the
Shi’ites in Iraq are not happy with these actions and are resisting them
with the means available to them. The religious leadership in Al-Najaf
and Al-Sadr and the Higher Islamic Council chairman, Ammar Al-Hakim,
reject these agendas.

But these actions are tantamount to a partisan and personal stand
that hides behind the [Shi’ite] community and doctrine, and its aim is
to consolidate the regime and liquidate its political adversaries and
partners, renege on agreements, and ignore the demands for balance and
justice in applying the law.

Q: You demanded the withdrawal of Iraqiya ministers in one of
your speeches at the Mosul demonstrations. Why did you not discuss this
issue while part of the coalition?

We discussed it as Iraqiya leaders and agreed that there must be
resignation from the government. Implementation was postponed until the
proper time … Dr. Rafie Al-Isawi asked the Iraqiya leadership to approve
his resignation, but we proposed that he postpone this step until the
resignation was collective. But there was a special circumstance in
Anbar’s demonstrations, and he announced his resignation. It was the
same with Agriculture Minister Dr. Izaddin Al-Dawlah, who announced his
resignation after the demonstrators in Mosul were targeted with live
fire, killing one of them and wounding others. Dr. Abdelkarim
Al-Samarra’i tendered his resignation to the demonstrators in Samarra.

Some ministers and Iraqiya leaders returned to the cabinet and
rebelled against the decision. We expect the remaining ministers to
comply with Iraqiya’s decision. We are convinced that it is futile to
remain in this government, and that there is a collective responsibility
for what the government is doing to the Iraqi people. Any minister who
remains in the cabinet carries a share of the responsibility for this
misguided policy that has started to threaten the Iraqi people’s unity
and cohesiveness.

Q: The government is saying that it has fulfilled a large
part of the demonstrators’ demands, but the demonstrators have remained
in the squares for almost four months….

It is a big lie when the Iraqi government says it has fulfilled the
demonstrators’ demands. The committees it formed did not offer or
achieve anything important. The demonstrators know this and are
continuing their sit-ins until their legitimate demands are met. They
are in their fourth month now, and I say they will not retreat even if
years pass because they have broken the fear barrier and rebelled. They
will not accept humiliation any more, nor the torture, the sectarian
killing or oppression. Never. They are struggling for the rights of all
Iraqis and not those of a particular community or sect. There must be an
awakening and the return of conscience to the Iraqi political parties
to force the prime minister to change his policy or replace him with
another one from the National Alliance.

Q: Do you not think that your decision to withdraw from the government was late?

There was a conviction after the Erbil agreement that there should be
a commitment to implementing it, that there would be coordination and
cooperation, and that there would be the enactment of some important
laws.

But the Erbil agreements were not implemented, and the problems
started from the first day of forming the government. Since that day, we
have been in a dispute with the prime minister, and have been trying to
use legal and constitutional ways to change this situation. But we have
not seen any response and believe that Maliki pursued deliberately this
policy of total control of the security portfolio and does not accept
power sharing. He did not accept partnership. He did not accept the
national balance. He did not accept the internal bylaws of the
premiership and left the state to proceed in a loose and haphazard way.

After securing his own position and after and the American forces’
withdrawal, he clearly targeted his adversaries and is now continuing to
do so. Actually, there are not any of the partners who do not have a
problem with Maliki. The Kurds are angry, and the Iraqi army and the Peshmerga
are facing each other in the disputed areas. The Iraqiya coalition
withdrew from the government and the Al-Sadr movement did the same. Two
thirds of the ministers are outside the government today. Are all the
parties and partners wrong and Maliki right? The truth is that
[Maliki’s] individual policies serve the interest of one person and a
small group from the Al-Da’wa Party and are against the interests and
aspirations of the Iraqi people, Shi’ites, Sunnis, and Kurds alike. This
is obvious to us and to the ordinary citizen.

Q: If that is the situation, and there are all these
disagreements and problems, then how do you explain the prime minister’s
position remaining strong and his government surviving?

There are, of course, several circumstances that have enabled him to
control the country, such as his interference in the judiciary, the
extensive hegemony over and taming of the judicial authority, and his
harassment of the Council of Representatives and not allowing it to
function properly, in cooperation with the judicial authority that
started to reject everything the council legislated.

He prevented the deputies from carrying out their duty and banned the
Human Rights Commission’s members from visiting jails. He closed the
roads to prevent parliamentarians visiting certain areas. He has even
started to say that deputies do not have immunity outside the parliament
and that the immunity is inside it only, and a member of parliament can
be arrested if he comes out to the media center to make a statement. He
sent us an official memorandum about this.

Q: Is this conceivable?

Yes. We received an official letter from one of Maliki’s peerless
advisers saying Council of Representatives members do not have immunity
outside parliament. We of course answered this. But there is
interference by the prime minister in the independent bodies’ work.

Q: What has been the response of parliament?

We have been arguing with him from day one, preventing him from
carrying out these actions and summoning him to parliament to question
him about the security situation, but he refuses to come. He has come to
parliament only once in two years to answer the deputies’ questions.

The other, more important, issue is his total control of the security
portfolio, the security services, and the defense, interior and
national security ministries and the intelligence service. He is the
prosecutor and the judge. He arrests whomever he wants, pardons whomever
he wants, accuses whomever he wants, and releases whomever he wants
while the judiciary is silent or collaborating with him.

It reached the point where he issued a warrant for the arrest of
Rafie Al-Isawi and the warrant was circulated to the checkpoints. When
the deputies cross the checkpoints, they are asked about his
whereabouts. When we established the “United” coalition in which Isawi
is a leading member, the army started to tear up the posters for the
local elections because Isawi was on them.

Regrettably, the army and security forces commanders have joined the
politics game and are getting orders directly from Maliki to target his
political adversaries. More than that, the army and police are the ones
putting up the elections posters for the prime minister’s list in the
streets and tearing up the posters of the other lists. This is happening
while the state’s institutions remain incomplete, legislation is not
debated or passed, and there are no bylaws for the cabinet that
specifies the nature and limits of its authority.

Q: Do you believe there is international support for the prime minister?

Certainly. The Americans and Iranians support Maliki. During his
recent visit to Baghdad I met the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and
he said, “We see the democratic experience in Iraq collapsing.”

I answered him: “You are the reason. You prevented his questioning in
parliament last year and this year. You and the Iranians are backing
Maliki in everything.”

I told him that this was interference in the affairs of Iraq, and was
preventing Iraq from taking the route of democracy. He asked me about
the solution for this situation and we presented proposals to him, among
them the government’s resignation and the formation of a provisional
one or holding early elections on the condition that they were beyond
Maliki’s control, because he cannot be trusted in this matter. Maliki
decided to postpone the Anbar and Ninawa elections illegally and in a
sectarian way and did not consult the Council of Representatives. I say
he does not wish the elections to be held in these two provinces so as
to incite chaos and encourage the extremists in these areas so he can
then tell the Iraqi people that the political process is futile.

What do we tell the people if the elections need to be held and they
are prevented from voting? This pushes the people into taking other
options far removed from the constitutional ones and this is a dangerous
road that disrupts the political process and threatens Iraq’s
stability.

Q: Did you not discuss this, the decision to postpone the elections in Ninawa and Anbar, in the Council of Representatives?

No. It was not referred to us. We are ready to discuss it, but what
is the use of doing so? Maliki will not accept parliament’s opinion and
will not implement it in the same way he did not with past decisions by
the council, decisions that had the power of law. We enacted laws and he
did not implement them. Some of them were revoked by the Federal Court
and others were shelved. These are not the action of a constitutional
state where there is a separation of powers.

Q: Members of parliament anywhere in the world are called
“legislators,” but Iraq’s Federal Court has said that legislation is not
one of the Council of Representatives’s tasks. What is your comment?

This is an attempt to tame parliament. Legislation, supervision, and
upholding the constitution are the basic tasks of the council. It is
obvious that ten of its members or one of its committees propose the
laws, the draft laws come from the government or the presidency but go
through the legislative process and are changed according to the
deputies’ proposal or decision. Even if a draft law came from the
government, it could still be changed completely. The majority votes and
the laws are ratified.

But to prevent the council from carrying out its legislative tasks by
a fatwa from the Federal Court means breaking the people’s power and
will and taming and weakening parliament and is an attempt to tighten
control over the security, political, and legislative power of the
state, and impose this hegemony on the Iraqi people.

Q: What are your thought on solutions to address the current situation?

Iraq is really facing a real threat under the current policy. We fear
the supremacy of violence. Demonstrators were killed in Fallujah, and
not a single attacker was brought before the courts even though
parliamentary committees investigated the incident and proved that the
army opened fire on unarmed and peaceful demonstrators for no reason at
all.

This constant friction between the army and security forces on one
side and the demonstrators on the other could detonate clashes at any
time. We are warning of this and saying the demonstrators’ demands must
be met and those involved in shedding Iraqi blood should be brought
before the judiciary, not only those who killed the demonstrators in
broad daylight, but also those who tortured the detainees and yet
remained in their posts and were defended.

Q: How do you view Al-Iraqiya’s coalition today? Is it strong?

It started strong and went through periods of weakness, and we can
say now that it is strong. There are arguments between two groups
[inside the coalition]. The first calls for making peace with Maliki at
the expense of the people’s interests and says it is useless to confront
him and we must remain silent until his remaining stay in power ends.
The other trend, which is the majority, stresses the withdrawal from the
government, standing with the demonstrators and the people’s rights,
and coordinating with the other forces that are unhappy with the
government’s performance. This difference in the arguments might cause a
split in the List if some brothers insist on implementing their
approach. Yet the majority is cohesive.

Q: Tariq Al-Hashemi, a leading member in your coalition and
the vice president, reproached Iraqiya for not supporting him when he
was accused and considers what happened to Isawi another example of what
happened to him.

On the issue of being persecuted, this is true. Several Iraqiya
leaders are on the government’s list of targets. The assassinations are
in full swing. Five Iraqiya candidates in the provincial council
elections were recently assassinated. But we certainly are not lax in
defending brother Tariq Al-Hashemi. The list stood with and defended him
from the first day. We are certain that he was subjected to an
injustice and the falsification of facts. His case is one of political
persecution and it reached the point of torturing his guards and the
death of some of them because of the torture. Some of them were
sentenced to death like he was in absentia. We could not stop this but
opposed it and continue to oppose it.

We are demanding a review of the case and a re-investigation because
there are parties in the government that want to punish Hashemi for his
national stand and also Dr. Isawi for the same reason. Other Iraqiya
leaders might face the same charge. Dr. Iyad Allawi or Osama Al-Nujaifi
might be the target. The police force protecting the house of Dr. Iyad,
Iraqiya’s leader and former prime minister, was withdrawn yesterday. I
say that we respect Hashemi and his national history and his reproach is
acceptable. For us, he remains one of Iraqiya’s leaders and are proud
of him as a patriotic figure.

An Interview with Osama Al-NujaifiSource: http://www.aawsat.net/2013/04/article55298941Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

by Raymond IbrahimWhile it is easy to confuse the recent jihadi attack on Egypt's St.
Mark Cathedral in Cairo as just more of the usual, this attack has great
symbolic significance, and in many ways bodes great evil for Egypt's
millions of Christians.

Consider some facts: St. Mark Cathedral—named after the author of the
Gospel of the same name who brought Christianity to Egypt some 600
years before Amr bin al-As brought Islam by the sword—is not simply
"just another" Coptic church to be attacked and/or set aflame by a
Muslim mob (see my forthcoming book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians,
for a comprehensive idea of past and present Muslim attacks on Coptic
churches). Instead, it is considered the most sacred building for
millions of Christians around the world—above and beyond the many
millions of Copts in and out of Egypt. As the only apostolic see in the
entire continent of Africa, its significance and evangelizing mission
extends to the whole continent, including nations such as Sudan,
Ethiopia, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria, to name just a few. As
an apostolic see—the actual seat of an apostle of Christ—the cathedral
further possesses historical significance for Christianity in general.

In short, Muslim mobs—aided and abetted by the state of Egypt under
Muslim Brotherhood tutelage—did not merely attack yet one more Coptic
church, but rather committed an act of war against all Christianity.
Such an open attack on a Christian center which holds symbolic and
historic significance for all Christians—St. Mark, whose relics are in
the cathedral and who authored one of the four Gospels of the Bible,
belongs to all Christians not just Copts—was an open attack on a
universally acknowledged Christian shrine. It was precisely these sorts
of attacks on Eastern and Orthodox churches—including the destruction of
the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem in 1009—that presaged the
way for the crusades (back when Christianity was not utterly fragmented and disunited as it is today).

Put differently, this jihadi attack on St. Mark Cathedral is no
different for Copts than a jihadi attack on the Vatican would be for
Catholics. Or, to maintain the analogy, but from the other side, it
would be no different than a "crusader" attack on the Grand Mosque of
Mecca for Muslims.

While one can only imagine how the world's Muslims would react to a
"Christian/Western" assault on their most sacred of shrines,
"post-Christian" Western leaders, as usual, stand idly by (not unlike
Egyptian state security, which stood idly by as the Muslim mob opened
fire on the cathedral).

As for Egypt's Copts, they certainly did rally to the defense of
Egypt's, if not the entire continent of Africa's, most important
cathedral—hence the draconian response from Egypt's interior ministry (one eyewitness said
security intentionally fired 40-50 gas bombs into the compound,
knocking out many Christians, including several women and children).
Just as Egyptian forces were wroth with Copts when they demonstrated
against the ongoing attacks on their churches in Maspero in
2011—slaughtering over 20 Christians, including by intentionally running
them over with armored-vehicles—it appears that Egyptian forces were
quite irked with "dhimmi" Copts boldly defending their holiest site.

On the other hand, that Copts rallied to the defense of their cathedral—or, as Reuters characterized them,
"an angry young fringe … of Christianity may also be turning to
violence—has further validated the Western mainstream media narrative
that Egypt's Christian minority is somehow equally violent and
responsible for the so-called "sectarian strife"—euphemism for Muslim
persecution of Christians—plaguing Egypt.

The symbolical significance of this latest Muslim attack on Christianity was confirmed by several activists. For example, Coptic Solidarity
President Adel Guindy said, "Attacking the seat of the Coptic Pope is
unprecedented in the last two centuries. It was a deliberate and
humiliating act demonstrating the growing Salafist-espoused culture of
hate and aggressive behavior towards all non-Muslims. It amounts to a
State crime."

Even the Coptic Pope, who must always be diplomatic lest his comments
exacerbate matters for his flock, did not equivocate the severity of
this assault on Coptic Christianity's most sacred spot—not to mention
his primary residence. Among other things, Pope Tawadros
said that President Muhammad Morsi had "promised to do everything to
protect the cathedral but in reality we don't see this…. We need action
not only words… There is no action on the ground." The Pope further
confirmed that "This flagrant assault on a national symbol, the Egyptian
church, has never been subjected to this in 2,000 years."

The Pope's comment "we need action not only words" was in response to
President Morsi's declaration that "I consider any attack on the
cathedral an attack against myself"—a declaration he made even as
Egyptian state security were firing tear gas canisters into the
cathedral compound and standing by watching as Muslims also opened fire
on the cathedral and hurled stones and Molotov cocktails, all of which
was captured by photos.
(Even so, and as usual, the only people to be arrested in connection
with this latest assault on Egypt's most important cathedral were Copts
themselves.)

Instead of words—which, from Islamists, areabsolutelyworthless—what
Morsi needs to address is the fact that the most unprecedented and
symbolically lethal attack on a Christian place of worship in post "Arab
Spring" Egypt took place right under his and the Muslim Brotherhood's
authority (under Hosni Mubarak, "not so much as a pebble"—as one activist put it—was thrown at the St. Mark Cathedral, a national landmark).

This of course is consistent with the fact that, unlike all former
Egyptian presidents, who were all Muslim, Islamist President Morsi is
the first president to refuse to enter a church—whether during the
ceremonious installation of the nation's new pope or whether during
Coptic Christmas ceremonies. Could this be because the pious Morsi
believes that a Christian church is like "a nightclub, [or] a gambling casino" as a prominent Egyptian fatwa council declared? Could it be that he, like other popular Muslim leaders, simply hates and is disgusted by Christians?

At any rate, here is the Muslim world's latest, most flagrant,
assault on Christianity, even as Western leadership yawns—that is, when
it's not actively enabling such anti-Christian animus through its
wholesale support for the "Arab Spring."

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.Source: http://www.meforum.org/3486/islamic-war-christianity

by Jonathan S. TobinOver the course of the last year, President Obama
has escalated his rhetoric against Iran. His repudiation of a policy of
containment of a nuclear Iran and his repeated promise never to allow
the Islamist regime to gain such a weapon has left him little room to
maneuver. Tehran continues to stonewall the diplomatic process initiated
by the United States and its partners in the P5+1 process. Just as
ominously, the ayatollahs have doubled down on their efforts to
strengthen their nuclear program. The number of centrifuges spinning
away to enrich uranium to bomb-level grade in their underground mountain
bunker facility has increased while international inspectors continue
to be kept away from sites where military applications of nuclear
technology can be found.

But with the clock ticking down toward the moment when the Iranians
will have enough fuel to make bombs, much of the foreign policy
establishment in the United States is still trying to influence the president
to back away from his pledge. The Iran Project has assembled a
formidable array of former diplomats and political figures to urge Obama
to not just stop talking about force but also to move away from the
economic sanctions he has belatedly implemented to pressure Tehran. The
group, which has strong ties to the administration, has issued a new
report, “Strategic Options for Iran: Balancing Pressure with Diplomacy,”
that is aimed at providing a rationale for Obama to embark on yet
another attempt at engagement with Iran that would effectively assure
the ayatollahs that they have nothing to fear from the West.

The timing of the release of this report couldn’t be any worse. It
comes only weeks after the president reaffirmed his commitment to
stopping Iran during his visit to Israel and in the direct aftermath of
the latest diplomatic fiasco in which the P5+1 group’s attempt to entice
Tehran to give up its nukes with concessions flopped. But given the
influence that signatories such as Thomas Pickering, Daniel Kurtzer, Lee
Hamilton, and Richard Lugar have with the Obama foreign policy
team—especially former Iran Project board member and current Secretary
of Defense Chuck Hagel—it’s an open question as to whether this document
will provide a template for a new round of appeasement of Iran.

While the report is couched in language that agrees with the
objective of preventing Iran from going nuclear, its recommendations are
primarily aimed at convincing Americans to embrace Tehran’s goals
rather than the other way around. Reading it one quickly realizes that
the author’s main fear is not so much the likelihood that Iran will
obtain nuclear weapons as it is the possibility that the United States
may be obligated to use force to prevent that from happening.

While the use of force, which a previous Iran Project paper signed by
Hagel sought to prevent, would entail grave risks, it is increasingly
clear that the alternative is not a diplomatic solution by which Iran
renounces its nuclear ambition but the containment policy that Obama has
specifically rejected.

But rather than endorse a strengthening of the sanctions regime which
has at least inflicted some pain on the Iranian economy and given the
ayatollahs at least a theoretical incentive to negotiate, the Iran
Project seeks to abandon this track. Their focus is solely on
negotiations.

The rationale for this puzzling strategy is an assumption that
sanctions only alienate and isolate the Iranians and will never persuade
them to give up positions they believe are essential to their national
interests. They are probably right when they argue that the combination
of diplomacy and sanctions will never convince Iran to surrender its
nukes. But they fail to explain how or why Tehran would do so without
the stick of sanctions or force hanging over their heads.

The report’s main interest is really not about the nuclear threat but
in promoting some sort of a rapprochement between Iran and the United
States. They acknowledge the wide gap between the two governments in
terms of their positions on terrorism, Middle East peace and human
rights. But they think it is possible for there to be mutually
satisfying relations if only the Americans put to rest any fears in
Tehran that the United States is interested in regime change in Iran.

It should be admitted that the chances that any putative American
efforts to topple the tyrannical Islamist regime short of invasion
(which not even those who advocate bombing their nuclear facilities
advocate) would not meet with success given the ruthless nature of the
Iranian government. But what these foreign policy “realists” are
advocating is a U.S. endorsement of one of the most repressive and
anti-Semitic governments in the world. This would be another betrayal of
American values as well as of a suffering Iranian people, who waited in
vain for the Obama administration to speak out against the 2009
crackdown against dissent.

While there are issues on which Iran and the United States might find
common ground, such as the drug trade and Afghanistan, the nature of
the Iranian regime is such that it is incapable of regarding America as
anything but its enemy. So long as the Islamists are in charge hope of
reconciliation or a restoration of the warm ties that existed prior to
the 1979 revolution are absurd.

While the Obama administration was slow to enact sanctions and is
still giving time to a diplomatic process that has only given the
Iranians the opportunity to stall the West, it is nevertheless committed
to doing the right thing on this issue. But we know the Iran Project’s
siren call of appeasement resonates with many working inside Obama’s
inner circle. The message between the lines in this report is one that
will pave the way for a containment policy that would reward Iran for
its flouting of the diplomatic process. If there is even the slightest
hope left that diplomacy and sanctions will work, it is vital that the
president reject this report and signal to the Iranians that they will
wait in vain for the U.S. to start another bout of appeasement.

by Barry Rubin The Arab-Israeli conflict has been largely replaced by the Sunni
Muslim-Shia Muslim conflict as the Middle East’s featured battle. While
the Arab-Israeli conflict will remain largely, though not always, one of
words, the Sunni-Shia battle involves multiple fronts and serious
bloodshed.

Shia Muslims are a majority in Iran and Bahrain; the largest single
group in Lebanon; and significant minorities in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
While the ruling Alawite minority in Syria is not Shia—as almost all
Sunni Muslims (but not Westerners) know, it has identified with that
bloc.

The main conflict in this confrontation is in Syria, where a Sunni
rebellion is likely to triumph and produce a strongly anti-Shia regime. A
great deal of blood has been shed in Iraq, though there the Shia
majority has triumphed.

The tension is already spreading to Lebanon, ruled largely by Shia
Hizballah. In Bahrain, where a small Sunni minority rules a restive Shia
majority, the government has just outlawed Hizballah as a terrorist,
subversive group, even while European states have refused to do so.

By Islamizing politics to a greater degree, the victories of the
(Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood group have deepened the Sunni-Shia battle.
And, of course, on the other side, Iran, as leader of the Shia bloc, has
been doing so, too, though its ambition was to be the leader of all
Middle East Muslims.

Yet also, especially when it comes to Iran, the Sunni Muslim bloc is
also very much an Arab one as well. Many Sunnis, especially the more
militantly Islamist ones, look at Shias—and especially at Iranian
Persians—as inferior people as well as heretical in terms of Islam. I
don’t want to overstate that point but it is a very real factor.

This picture is clarified by a recent report by the Cordoba
Foundation, a research center based in the UK and close to the Muslim
Brotherhood. The name, after the Spanish city where Islamic religion and
culture flourished before the Christian reconquest in the fifteenth
century, may seem chosen to denote multiculturalism and peaceful
coexistence. But, of course, it was picked to suggest the Islamic empire
at its peak and the continued claim to every country it once ruled,
including Spain.

In the report, Iran is identified as the aggressor against the Sunni
Muslim (Arab) world, pushing “its political influence through religious
sectarianism.” Implicitly the discussion rejects the idea that either
“the Palestinian issue” or unity as Muslims overrides the Iranian
national security threat.

One concern is that of demography. ”Such demographic pockets [that
is, non-Sunni Muslims and non-Arabs--BR] in some Arab countries pose a
threat to society regardless of how small they are.”

Remarkably, the paper states that Iraq’s population changes “have
distanced it from the Arab order.” In other words, because there are
more Shia Muslims and non-Arab Kurds in Iraq, it is out of phase with
other Arab states and might look toward either Tehran or Washington.

Another demographic concern is Iran’s alleged effort to convert
non-Muslim Alevis in Turkey (they say they are Muslim but they aren’t
really); Syrian Alawites (same story), and Yemeni Shia Muslims (of a
different sect) to Iran-style Shia Islam (Twelver Shiism).

Iran has also succeeded, the paper continues, “in securing strategic
victories, such as its gains in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bahrain, Yemen,
and the eastern parts of Saudi Arabia. Actually, though these are pretty
limited gains in each case.

Syria, where the pro-Iran regime is likely to be replaced by a Sunni,
Muslim Brotherhood one, is a setback for Iran. And by overthrowing
Syria’s regime, the sponsor of Hizballah, that will cut Iran’s
sponsorship of Lebanese Shia (Hizballah), “almost thirty years of hard
work totally wasted.” That’s overstated but contains some basic truth.

The paper also states, accurately, “Although Islamic movements in the
Arab world may seem on the surface to be homogenous and inspired by the
same intellectual sources, there is lack of coordination and total
chaos.” As an example it cites the Sunni Islamist movement in Iraq which
faces: “Serious challenges from expanding Turkish economic interests,
Iranian cultural and sectarian influence, and Kurdish expansionism.” It
then asks whether the Iranian and local Shia or the Iraqi Kurds are the
bigger threat.

Usually, the paper explains, the main threats are identified as the
United States and Israel. Israel “still lives in the Arab consciousness
as the biggest threat to Arab Islamic culture.”

Two points here. On the one hand, a group of leading Sunni Islamists
is saying that Israel is not the biggest security threat to Arabs and
Muslims today! On the other hand, Israel is identified as a cultural
threat. Why? Because it is a socio-economic success story and thus
subverts the narrative of Arab ethnic, cultural, and religious
superiority or because it is a symbol of modernism?

But here’s the key conclusion:

“Prior to the Syrian revolution, there was no consensus on
what constitutes the greatest threat to our national security, but it
has since become evident that the Iranian threat is much bigger than
American and Israeli threats.”

This is an intellectual-political earthquake in Middle East history.
It in no way implies a friendly attitude toward America or Israel–which
are still seen as threats–but it is an important factor to consider in
Western policymaking.

One reason why Iran is such a huge threat, the paper continues, is
that all Arabs and Muslims know about the United States. But Iran
operates from the “inside” and in a “hidden” manner because it seems to
be Muslim, Third World, anti-American, and anti-Israel. So it can fool
Sunni Arab Muslims, stab them from the book, alter their culture, and
take over institutions.

Thus, in Iraq, “Iran invested a lot of money and effort destroying
Iraq from within through bribery and purchasing loyalties.” Of course,
the real problem for the Sunni Arab Islamist movement in Iraq is that
the majority of people are either Shia Muslims or Kurds who, while Sunni
Muslim, have their own nationalist identity.

The paper is equally tough on Turkey, despite that country’s regime
wanting to lead the Arab Sunnis. But while it is an economic threat, it
doesn’t have much political or strategic leverage and is at least not
trying to alter Sunni religion and culture.

While giving passing mention to the concept that Iran is merely
aggressive because it has been fooled by American imperialism, the Sunni
Arab Islamists claim that Iran often acts in conjunction with U.S.
policy. Although you may find this idea to be strange, remember that
Tehran did go along with U.S. operations against Afghanistan and Iraq,
attacks which removed two of Iran’s Sunni enemies.

They conclude, “We no longer have any choice but to defend ourselves
against Iran,” which holds “a sectarian, ethnic, Persian agenda.”

While the paper claims that “The United States…actually handed over
Iraq to Iran and allowed it to expand into Syria,” the fact is that the
West has in effect backed Sunni Islamist control over Egypt, Tunisia,
and Syria. This shows, however, that the Sunni Islamists will never
credit—they cannot do so ideologically—any U.S. help they receive, much
less reciprocate.

What this means is that a Sunni Islamist bloc now confronts a Shia
Islamist bloc. Both claim, with some evidence, the United States of
supporting their enemy. The question for Western policymakers should be
not to take sides—“good” Islamists against “bad” Islamists—but how to
use and enhance this conflict. The worst temptation is to believe that
putting one side into power–in other words, Sunni Islamists because they
may hate Iran–will counter the other.

Today, aside from the undoubtedly important nuclear weapons’ issue,
the main strategic threat in the Middle East is Sunni Islamism. Why?
Simple. Iran cannot expand its influence successfully into Sunni Muslim
majority areas yet the Arab world is overwhelmingly Sunni. Iran cannot
win. Only Sunni Islamism can generate new dictatorships, repression, and
conventional wars.